Aengus Ó Snodaigh Questions RTÉ Personal Contracts and Pensions

I don't know where to start, finish that. You mentioned that Derry cut out the personal contract and then he's also on staff. So is the personal contract a contract with a company or is it... We've got quite a number of people who are on staff who have a personal contract. What normally happens is there's a particular reason why they're given one if they've reached a salary cap and we don't do it anymore really, but in the past they'd reached a salary cap, they might be offered a job somewhere else, we want to keep them and so they need to get a personal contract to pay them enough that we can keep them or whatever. So it was a way of bypassing the cap, was it? No, it's not a bypassing thing, there's quite a few people in RT on a personal contract. It's not talking about Derry cut anybody, but was this a way of getting around it? And as you said, to hold on to personnel. Look, it's one of the ways, it's not getting around it, but it's one of the ways of paying someone more when they've reached the cap, but it would have to be agreed by HR and so on. And so all the personal contracts are included in the assessment of... Yeah, they're all staff contracts, they're just a different type of staff contract. But it means you have people who are the same length of time, same title, will be earning different to others. I mean, there's a whole range of individual contracts in RT and allowances that people get. Okay, I was going to ask about some... altogether to do with pensions because that was what we were originally earmarked to deal with and it's more in relation to the department. Last week we were dealing with Post here and their pension and we were asking kind of what role the minister has, the oversight, so probably more akin to the department answer, what role does the department or the minister have in oversight on the pension schemes within RT? There's several of them and kind of is the minister the final arbitrator in terms of requests for instance for an increase in our payments from the pension scheme and I know that there was recently the minister refused a request by one of the pension schemes in RT to, I think it was move the administration costs to an outsource company. Yes, thanks deputy. So look, there's three RT pension schemes and for the defined contribution one, I think the minister doesn't have a role in terms of the approval of pension increases and that but for the 50-50 scheme and the RTSA scheme, so the minister, the trustees will propose an increase in pensions and then that will come to the department and then we work through that and we will advise the minister and he will approve or not in terms of that and then it goes to the minister for depender in terms of that kind of final approval and then that goes back to the trustees then in terms of that. So in some ways it's the minister has basically the final say and has control of the pension scheme on an oversight, an annual basis rather than RT deals with kind of investing the assets and holding them and managing them, the minister has the say? Yes, so the trustees are responsible for the management to the pension fund and the assets that are associated in there and the decisions that get made in terms of that but then if there's a request for an increase and or a change in regulation, then that will come through then to the minister and ultimately then on to the minister for depender for the final arbitration or approval of that. The issue we were dealing with last week, it's just strange, the commercial semi-state body that the minister controls that aspect and that's why we were looking at it in committee last week and we'll probably come back to it. The pension, one of the pension schemes is down, maybe all of them are down as an asset for RT and so it turns up on the books but it's kind of RT can't spend it, can't use it, it's the trustees. It's on the books though, yeah. It's on the books but is that normal practice? That's normal practice, yeah. Okay, I'll just affirm that slightly. The other question is obviously all of them are in surplus I think and doing well but is there a challenge for RT if you are, as you intend, reducing the numbers of staff in the future therefore there'll be a reduced input into the pension. So will there be a challenge to any of the three pension funds? No, I mean the two that could potentially be affected, the DB scheme which is the old one, which is there's only about a dozen people still working for the organisation who contribute to that because it was closed a number of years ago. So in any event that'll be winding up in terms of employees in the next few years and that scheme has a surplus of around 200 million euros so it's extremely well funded by the standard. How many pensioners are benefiting from that at the moment? I don't know the exact number but it's hundreds, yeah.